ElainaA

Rosemary focaccia with olives and red onions. I don't bake much in the summer but today it is cooler.

"Squidgy". That's my kind of scientific terminology. Edited to add: I learn the best words from this site!

Today's pickage (Shelby thank you for this word!). I didn't get a picture of the red and yellow peppers. A lot of this goes into tonight's dinner: gratin of eggplant with roasted peppers and roasted garlic and tomato sauce. It's getting to the race between ripeness and frost. I still have lots of green tomatoes, a few tiny eggplants and peppers working on turning red or yellow. I've got about 2-3 weeks until average date for frost. But yesterday it was over 90. Right now its 55. Strange.

A grilled pork chop over creamed leeks and topped with apples sautéed and simmered with brandy and chicken broth. Plus the usual seasonal tomato/cucumber/onion salad. This is one of my 'once or twice a year' recipes - the ones I make when the leeks in my garden are ready. (I have others for beets and for zucchini.)

Grilled chicken with tomato chutney, sweet potato fires and zucchini fries (Thanks! Liamsaunt!). Plus a plate of tomatoes.

After spending a (very painful) week in hospital with food poisoning due to badly stored leftovers a family party, I am fanatic about food safety. Adding 2 tablespoons of lemon juice to a quart of canned tomatoes ensures safety. Why would anyone not do it? From the CDC (Center for Disease Control): Botulism is a rare but potentially life-threatening bacterial illness. Clostridium Botulinum bacteria grows on food and produces toxins that, when ingested, cause paralysis. Botulism poisoning is extremely rare, but so dangerous that each case is considered a public health emergency. Studies have shown that there is a 35 to 65 percent chance of death for patients who are not treated immediately and effectively with botulism antitoxin. Most of the botulism cases reported each year come from foods that are not canned properly at home.

No picture again - but a very good dinner in spite of our local supermarket. My husband's night to cook. He wanted to make stuffed peppers with spiced lamb and feta (a CI recipe). I do my grocery shopping on Sunday. So - no ground lamb. In fact no lamb at all. And no veal, which I thought of as an alternative. So I ask the nice man in the meat department and am told that they will no longer stock either lamb or veal - when he put it on the week's order it was eliminated by 'higher management'. Evidently our rural upstate NY community doesn't buy enough lamb or veal so it does not make financial sense to stock it. Unfortunately we have 2 supermarkets in town and this one generally has much better produce and fish. The other is a mile drive across town. So we had stuffed peppers with ground beef. They still were very good. But I am also still really annoyed. (I'm being polite here.) Do any of you out there who live in rural areas have similar problems?

If you have extra room in your freezer the kreatopita freezes very well. I make a large pan and then freeze half of it. Each half gives us (just my husband and I) a dinner and a lunch.

Anna - Yes I did. I did use purchased phyllo. (I have seen instructions for making your own but that, I believe, is beyond me.) The filling reflects a combination of 3 separate recipes from various internet sites. I spent some wonderful times in Greece many, many years ago when I was in the travel-with-a-backpack-and-Eurail pass-and-almost-no-money stage of life. Sometimes I like to try to recreate the memories. Or maybe I'm having flashback.

Kreatopita and salad. I'm not sure they show up but there are pea shoots on top of the salad- serendipitously. Sometime ago I picked and shelled the last of the garden peas - and then had to be away for over a week, leaving them in the fridge. When I came back some of the peas were putting out shoots - so I planted them. I know there is not enough time before frost to get actual peas so I am using the pea shoots.

In Fine Preserving by Catherine Plagemann, annotated by M.F.K. Fisher, there are recipes for 2 other uses for grapes. One is pickled grapes which has no appeal to me but M.F.K. Fisher loved it. "Wash 3 cups grapes.If the grapes are not seedless, they must be halved and seeded.Place in clean canning jars. Combine 1 1/2 cups sugar, 1 cup white vinegar, 3 3" sticks of cinnamon and bring to a boil, stirring. Simmer 5 minutes and pout over the grapes, putting a cinnamon stick in each jar. Let stand overnight. They are ready to use the next day. Serve cold and drained, as a relish with meat, poultry or fish or as an accompaniment for curry." (She doesn't mention processing it. I'd refrigerate it. And probably do it in one large jar rather than 3 small ones.) The other is spiced grapes - also meant as a relish with meat or poultry. This one is specifically meant for Concord grapes. Again, I haven't tried this. "Wash 4 cups of grapes. Pinch out the inside, reserving the skins. Cook the skins in a small amount of water until really mushy, about 1/2 hr. Put the pulp through a sieve to extract the seeds and add it to the skins. Add: 1/4 cup white wine vinegar or white vinegar, 1 pound sugar, 1/4 t. cinnamon, 1/4 t. ground allspice, 1/8 t. ground cloves. Boil gently until it has thickened to suit you. Test on a chilled saucer to see how it is doing. It should be done in 1/2 - 3/4 hour." Plagemann has you seal the jars with paraffin - today considered unsafe. I think you could process it like jam or just refrigerate it. If you try either, let me know how it works out.

I went to the Syracuse farmer's market this morning. I came back with some honey crisp apples, a bushel of tomatoes for canning, some lovely young ginger and, the best thing, 2 sfogliatelle.

Anna -Thanks for posting this. I grow a lot of leeks - more than we can easily eat when they are fresh and they only hold so long in the fridge. I have never frozen them but I'm going to this year. As you say, they get expensive so I rarely buy them and we love them. It is currently "leek season" here and will be through October. Like carrots they not only survive frost in the garden but get sweeter after they have been 'frosted'.

Still canning...... This week: 5 jars of Plum Jam with Lemon and Honey, 11 quarts of tomatoes and 7 pints of "Annie's Salsa". Annie is a canning guru who posts on GardenWeb's Harvest forum. I like this recipe both because it tastes really good but also because she had this recipe tested by her state extension office and certified as safe for water bath canning. Salsa is tricky because the balance of acidity can easily be unsafe due to all the vegetables. I spent this morning at the Syracuse farmer's market and came home with a bushel of tomatoes - so there is a lot more canning in my future. Edited, as always, for spelling and typos. (Which initially came out 'typso')

Does a meal really need anything other than fresh corn and summer tomatoes? When corn and tomatoes are in season it is hard to pretend to care about anything else.

Tonight's dinner was not photogenic. The menu was pork tenderloin medallions with honey mustard sauce, local corn on the cob and sautéed, grated beets. The problem was the beets. It turned out that all the beets left in the garden were chioggia beets. Grated, raw, they looked nice - pink and white. Sautéed they turned a really nasty grey. They actually tasted fine but photogenic? NO.

I haven't tried that! It sounds really good. Come to Upstate NY sometime and go to the Dino for the original.

Dinosaur Bar-B-Que is a Syracuse (NY) landmark restaurant. They market some of their condiments including the "Sensuous Slathering Sauce" (also referred to as "the mutha sauce". All the local supermarkets here carry them and I know my daughter found them at Wegman's in New Jersey but I'm not sure how widely available they are. However, they very kindly include recipes for all the condiments in their cookbook. For last night's dinner I used a bottle I had in the refrig. It is sort of a 'dump in some of everything sauce' - I use it on pork chops and chicken to grill and in what the Dino cookbook calls "Honky Tonk Pot roast' and their (I am sure inauthentic) version of Ropa Vieja. The restaurant started in Syracuse but has now expanded to Brooklyn, Harlem, Newark,various upstate NY cities and is about to open in Baltimore. Upstate NY is not a barbecue center - I have no idea how authentic their food is but I do know it is really good. The owners started out cooking for motorcycle gatherings and swap meets - I don't know about the other locations but in Syracuse they try to keep the biker bar vibe alive (the cookbooks is illustrated with pictures of the waitress's tattoos)- in spite of all the middle class family groups waiting in line outside for a table. Here's the recipe: (I did warn you about the ingredient list, didn't I?) Mutha Sauce from Dinosaur Bar-B-Que (This makes A LOT - 6-7 cups. It's easy to halve or quarter) (But it does keep well) 1/4 c. vegetable oil 2 cups ketchup 1/4 c. spicy brown mustard 1 c. minced onion 1 c. water 3/4 c. dark brown sugar, packed 1/2 c. minced green pepper 3/4 c. Worchestershire sauce 1 T chili powder 1 jalapeno pepper,minced 1/2 c cider vinegar 2 t. black pepper (coarse grind) pinch each salt & pepper 1/4 c. lemon juice 1/2 t. ground allspice 2T minced garlic 1/4 c. molasses 1T liquid smoke (optional - I leave this out) 1 28oz can tomato sauce 1/4 c. cayenne pepper sauce Saute the onions, green peppers and jalapeños in the oil. Season with a pinch of salt and of pepper, cook until soft. Add garlic and cook one minute more. Dump in everything else except the Liquid Smoke. Bring to a boil, lower the heat and simmer 10 minutes. If you are using the Liquid smoke, add it now. Cool and store in the fridge until you want to use it. The chicken and zucchini dish also used what they call 'Creole Seasoning' - a spice/herb mix of paprika, black pepper,cayenne, oregano, thyme, cumin, granulated garlic and granulated onion. Let me know if you want the recipe for the chicken/zuc. dish. Dino also markets 'Mojito Marinade' - that recipe is also in the cook book. It's really good with chicken.

A recipe from a (more or less) local icon - the Dinosaur Bar-B-Que in Syracuse - "chicken and zucchini picante" - which means chicken strips, zucchini, tomatoes, peppers,olives and onions with their "sensuous slathering sauce". Served over rice, with a salad of tomatoes and cukes. It is a beautiful night so we ate in the gazebo.

No picture - but tonight was veal rolls filled with leeks and parmesan, pasta with oil, garlic and red, yellow and green peppers and the inevitable (in our home) salad. Thank you Marcella Hazan for the inspiration. It was really good.

I don't have an exact equivalent but 2 recipes come to mind. I have not tried either yet but both sources are very reliable. Ferber much better than reliable. Christine Ferber in Mes Confitures has a recipe for pear jam with walnuts and pine nuts. I don't see why you could not substitute almonds (slivered or sliced). She uses green apple jelly in place of commercial pectin but if you don;t have that you could substitute commercial pectin. Her recipes usually make about 6-7 jelly jars. 2 3/4 lbs ripe William or bartlett pears 3 3/4 cups sugar juice of 1 small lemon 7 oz nuts ( in this recipe divided between walnuts and pine nuts) 7 oz green apple jelly 2 vanilla beans (optional) Peel pears, stem, halve and core. Cut into small dice. Combine pears,l sugar, lemon juice and vanilla beans, split in half. Cover and nacerate for 1 hour. Turn into a preserving pan and bring to a simmer. Pour into a bowl and refrigerate overnight. Next day, bring mixture to a boil, skim and add apple jelly (or pectin), Cook on high heat for 5 minutes. Check for set. Remove vanilla beans and add nuts. Return to a boil. Put into hot jars and process 10 minutes. (Ferber doesn't process her jams but I just think that is wrong.) The other recipe is from the Ball Blue Book. It is for Pears and Almonds - not a jam but pieces of fruit in syrup. I don't think it would be hard to this into a jam. 7 lbs pears 2 ups sugar 4 cups water 1/2 cup blanched almonds 1/2 cup almond liquor Wash, peel, core and slice pears. Have pint jars ready and hot. Cook pears in small amount of water until hot throughout. Keep hot. Combine sugar and 4 cups water and bring to a boil, stirring until sugar dissolves. Reduce heat to a simmer and simmer 5 minutes. Remove from heat and stir in almond liquor. Pack pears into jars, leaving 1/2 inch headspace. Add 1T. almonds. Ladle hot syrup over pears, leaving 1/2" headspace, nClean rim, adjust lid and ring. Process 20 minutes.

Pizza night: One with artichoke hearts, ham, tomatoes, pesto,basil and mozzarella and one with tomato sauce, red and green peppers, onions, hot pepper and mozzarella. Plus a salad that I did not photograph.

Thanks Shelby - I like lots of different colors. Not quite as important as taste when choosing varieties but close.

Today I pulled and shelled the coco noir beans: And, finally (actually normal timing for this area, but looking at all your gorgeous pictures has made me impatient) the tomatoes are coming in: I picked the first mahogany garnets, one of this year's experiments : They are beautiful and delicious. True to the seed catalog description, the skin is very thin and they bruise easily. Not a tomato you are likely to see in a store.

I really like the lavash crackers from The Bread Bakers Apprentice. (Looking back on this thread I see that this recipe was recommended in 2008). They are easy to make, you can top them with whatever or everything and they hold up really well. Elaina